Relationship With The Governor
The State Treasurer is an independently elected officer with both Constitutional and Statutory authority. As such, the Governor has no direct authority over the State Treasurer. However, Oklahoma's history of electing Governors and Treasurers of the same party has often led to positive working relationships between the two offices. With Governor Mary Fallin and State Treasurer Ken A. Miller, both Republicans, Oklahoma has had a Governor and State Treasurer of the same party since 2003.
The State Treasurer is the state's elected chief fiscal officer and is directly accountable to the voters. In contrast, the Governor's Secretary of Finance reports directly to the Governor. Only once in recent history has a State Treasurer also served as the Governor's budget advisor; Governor Brad Henry appointed Miller's predecessor Scott Meacham as his Secretary of Finance and Revenue, giving Meacham supervision over all finance agencies of the State government.
When the Governor and State Treasurer are of different parties, the State Treasurer's role in State government is often minimal.
The Governor, acting through the Oklahoma Office of State Finance (whose Director serves at the pleasure of the Governor), can only suggest a budget to the Legislature, which is charged with crafting the funding decisions. The Governor does have veto power to influence the end result of the budget. The State Treasurer does not have the power to alter the budget or to impound funds, but the success of the Treasurer's investments influence the funds available for allocation.
Read more about this topic: Oklahoma State Treasurer
Famous quotes containing the words relationship with the, relationship with, relationship and/or governor:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”
—Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945)
“Whatever may be our just grievances in the southern states, it is fitting that we acknowledge that, considering their poverty and past relationship to the Negro race, they have done remarkably well for the cause of education among us. That the whole South should commit itself to the principle that the colored people have a right to be educated is an immense acquisition to the cause of popular education.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)